Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah Part 8

THE SONG OF TWO CITIES

'In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will G.o.d appoint for walls and bulwarks. 2. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in. 3. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee; because he trusteth in Thee. A. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength: 5. For He bringeth down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, He layeth it low; He layeth it low, even to the ground He bringeth it even to the dust. 6.

The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy. 7. The way of the just is uprightness: Thou, most upright, dost weigh the path of the Just. 8. Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for Thee; the desire of our soul is to Thy name, and to the remembrance of Thee. 9. With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early: for when Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. 10. Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord.'--ISAIAH xxvi. 1-10.'

'This song' is to be interpreted as a song, not with the cold-blooded accuracy proper to a scientific treatise. The logic of emotion is as sound as that of cool intellect, but it has its own laws and links of connection. First, the song sets in sharp contrast the two cities, describing, in verses 1-4, the city of G.o.d, its strength defences, conditions of citizenship, and the peace which reigns within its walls; and in verses 5 and 6 the fall and utter ruin of the robber city, its antagonist Jerusalem, on its rocky peninsula, supplies the form of Isaiah's thought; but it is only a symbol of the true city of G.o.d, the stable, invisible, but most real, polity and order of things to which men, even while wandering lonely and pilgrims, do come, if they will.

It is possible even here and now to have our citizenship in the heavens, and to feel that we belong to a great community beyond the sea of time, though our feet have never trodden its golden pavements, nor our eyes seen its happy glories.

In one aspect, it is ideal, but in truth it is more real than the intrusive and false things of this fleeting present, which call themselves realities. 'The things which are' are the things above. The things here are but shows and shadows.

The city's walls are salvation. There is no need to name the architect of these fortifications. One hand only can pile their strength. G.o.d appoints salvation in lieu of all visible defences. Whom He purposes to save are saved. Whom He wills to keep safe are kept safe. They who can shelter behind that strong defence need no other. Weak, sense-governed hearts may crave something more palpable, but they do not really need it. A parapet on an Alpine road gives no real security, but only satisfies imagination. The sky needs no pillars to hold it up.

Then an unknown voice breaks in upon the song, calling on unnamed attendants to fling wide the gates. The city is conceived of as empty; its destined inhabitants must have certain qualifications. They must be righteous, and must 'keep faithfulness' being true to the G.o.d who is 'faithful and true' in all His relations. None but the righteous can dwell in conscious citizenship with the Unseen while here, and none but the righteous can enter through the gates into the city. That requirement is founded in the very nature of the case, and is as emphatically proclaimed by the gospel as by the prophet. But the gospel tells more articulately than he was enlightened to do, how righteousness is to be won. The last vision of the Apocalypse, which is so like this song in its central idea, tells us of the fall of Babylon, of the descent to earth of the New Jerusalem, and leaves as its last message the great saying, 'Blessed are they that wash their robes that they may ... enter in through the gate into the city.'

Our song gives some hint of similar thoughts by pa.s.sing from the description of the qualifications for entrance to the celebration of the security which comes from trust. The safety which is realised within the walls of the strong city is akin to the 'perfect peace' in which he who trusts is kept; and the juxtaposition of the two representations is equivalent to the teaching that trust, which is precisely the same as the New Testament faith, is the condition of entrance. We know that faith makes righteous, because it opens the heart to receive G.o.d's gift of righteousness; but that effect of faith is implied rather than stated here, where security and peace are the main ideas. As some fugitives from the storm of war sit in security behind the battlements of a fortress, and scarcely hear the din of conflict in the open field below, the heart, which has taken refuge by trust in G.o.d, is kept in peace so deep that it pa.s.ses description, and the singer is fain to give a notion of its completeness by calling it 'peace, peace.' The mind which trusts is steadied thereby, as light things lashed to a firm stay are kept steadfast, however the ship toss.

The only way to get and keep fixedness of temper and spirit amid change and earthquake is to hold on to G.o.d, and then we may be stable with stability derived from the foundations of His throne to which we cling.

Therefore the song breaks into triumphant fervour of summons to all who hear it, to 'trust in Jab Jehovah for ever,' Such settled, perpetual trust is the only att.i.tude corresponding to His mighty name, and to the realities found in His character. He is the 'Bock of Ages' the grand figure which Moses learned beneath the cliffs of Sinai and wove into his last song, and which tells us of the unchanging strength that makes a sure hiding-place for all generations, and the ample s.p.a.ce which will hold all the souls of men, and be for a shadow from the heat, a covert from the tempest, a shelter from the foe, and a home for the homeless, with many a springing fountain in its clefts.

The great act of judgment which the song celebrates is now (vs. 5, 6) brought into contrast with the blessed picture of the city, and by the introductory 'for' is stated as the reason for eternal trust. The language, as it were, leaps and dances in jubilation, heaping together brief emotional and synonymous clauses. So low is the once proud city brought, that the feet of the poor tread it down. These 'poor' and 'needy' are the true Israel, the suffering saints, who had known how cruel the sway of the fallen robber city was; and now they march across its site; and its broken columns and ruined palaces strew the ground below their feet. 'The righteous nation' of the one picture are 'the poor and needy' of the other. No doubt the prophecy has had partial accomplishments more than once or twice, when the oppressed church has triumphed, and some h.o.a.ry iniquity been levelled at a blow, or toppled over by slow decay. But the complete accomplishment is yet future, and not to be realised till that last act, when all antagonism shall be ended, and the net result of the weary history of the world be found to be just these two pictures of Isaiah's--the strong city of G.o.d with its happy inhabitants, and the everlasting desolations of the fallen city of confusion.

The triumphant hurry of the song pauses for a moment to gaze upon the crash, and in verse 7 gathers its lessons into a kind of proverbial saying, which is perhaps best translated 'The path of the just is smooth (or "plain"); Thou levellest smooth the path of the just.' To render 'upright' instead of 'smooth' seems to make the statement almost an identical proposition, and is tame. What is meant is, that, in the light of the end, the path which often seemed rough is vindicated. The judgment has showed that the righteous man's course had no unnecessary difficulties. The goal explains the road. The good man's path is smooth, not because of its own nature, but because G.o.d makes it so. We are to look for the clearing of our road, not to ourselves, nor to circ.u.mstances, but to Him; and even when it is engineered through rocks and roughnesses, to believe that He will make the rough places plain, or give us shoes of iron and bra.s.s to encounter them. Trust that when the journey is over the road will be explained, and that this reflection, which breaks the current of the swift song of the prophet, will be the abiding, happy conviction of heaven.

Lastly, the song looks back and tells how the poor and needy, in whose name the prophet speaks, had filled the dreary past, while the tyranny of the fallen city lasted, with yearning for the judgment which has now come at last. Verses 8 and 9 breathe the very spirit of patient longing and meek hope. There is a certain tone of triumph in that 'Yea,' as if the singer would point to the great judgment now accomplished, as vindicating the long, weary hours of hope deferred. That for which 'the poor and needy' wait is the coming 'in the path of Thy judgments.' The att.i.tude of expectance is as much the duty and support of Christians as of Israel. We have a greater future clearer before us than they had.

The world needs G.o.d's coming in judgment more than ever; and it says little for either the love to G.o.d or the benevolence towards man of average Christians, that they should know so little of that yearning of soul which breathes through so much of the Old Testament. For the glory of G.o.d and the good of men, we should have the desire of our souls turned to His manifestation of Himself in His righteous judgments. It was no personal end which bred the prophet's yearning. True, the 'night' round him was dreary enough, and sorrow lay black on his people and himself; but it was G.o.d's 'name' and 'memorial' that was uppermost in his desires. That is to say, the chief object of the devout soul's longings should be the glory of G.o.d's revealed character. And the deepest reason for wishing that He would flash forth from His hiding-place in judgments, is because such an apocalypse is the only way by which wilfully blind eyes can be made to see, and wilfully unrighteous hearts can be made to practise righteousness.

Isaiah believed in the wholesome effect of terror. His confidence in the power of judgments to teach the obstinate corresponds to the Old Testament point of view, and contains a truth for all points of view; but it is not the whole truth. We know only too well that sorrows and judgments do not work infallibly, and that men 'being often reproved, harden their necks.' We know, too, more clearly than any prophet of old could know, that the last arrow in G.o.d's quiver is not some unheard-of awfulness of judgment, but an unspeakable gift of love, and that if that 'favour shown to the wicked' in the life and death of G.o.d's Son does not lead him to 'learn righteousness,' nothing else will.

But while this is true, the prophet's aspirations are founded on the facts of human nature too, and judgments do sometimes startle those whom kindness had failed to touch. It is an awful thought that human nature may so steel itself against the whole armoury of divine weapons as that favour and severity are equally blunted, and the heart remains unpierced by either. It is an awful thought that there may be induced such truculent obstinacy of love of evil that, even when in 'a land of uprightness,' a man shall choose evil, and forcibly shut his eyes, that he may not see the majesty of the Lord, which he does not wish to see because it condemns his choice, and threatens to burn up him and his work together. A blasted tree when all the woods are green, a fleece dry when all around is rejoicing in the dew, a window dark when the whole city is illuminated, one black sheep amid the white flock, or anything else anomalous and alone in its evil, is less tragic than the sight, so common, of a man so sold to sin that the presence of good only makes him angry and restless. It is possible to dwell amidst the full light of Christian truth, and in a society moulded by its precepts, and to be unblessed, unsoftened thereby. If not softened, then hardened; and the wicked who in the land of uprightness deals wrongfully is all the worse for the light which he hated because it showed him the sinfulness of the sin which he obstinately loved and would keep.

OUR STRONG CITY

'In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will G.o.d appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.'--ISAIAH xxvi 1-2.

What day is 'that day'? The answer carries us back a couple of chapters, to the great picture drawn by the prophet of a world-wide judgment, which is followed by a burst of song from the ransomed people of Jehovah, like Miriam's chant by the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea. The 'city of confusion,' the centre of the power hostile to G.o.d and man, falls; and its fall is welcomed by a chorus of praises. The words of my text are the beginning of one of these songs. Whether or not there were any historical event which floated before the prophet's mind is wholly uncertain. If there were a smaller judgment upon some city of the enemy, it pa.s.ses in his view into a world-wide judgment; and my text is purely ideal, imaginative, and apocalyptic. Its nearest ally is the similar vision of the Book of the Revelation, where, when Babylon sank with a splash like a millstone in the stream, the ransomed people raised their praises.

So, then, whatever may have been the immediate horizon of the prophet, and though, there may have stood on it some historical event, the city which he sees falling is other than any material Babylon, and the strong city in which he rejoices is other than the material Jerusalem, though it may have suggested the metaphor of my text. The song fits our lips quite as closely as it did the lips from which it first sprang, thrilling with triumph: 'We have a strong city; salvation will G.o.d appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.'

There are three things, then, here: the city, its defences, its citizens.

I. The City.

Now, no doubt the prophet was thinking of the literal Jerusalem; but the city is ideal, as is shown by the bulwarks which defend, and by the qualifications which permit entrance. And so we must pa.s.s beyond the literalities of Palestine, and, as I think, must not apply the symbol to any visible inst.i.tution or organisation if we are to come to the depth and greatness of the meaning of these words. No church which is organised amongst men can be the New Testament representation of this strong city. And if the explanation is to be looked for in that direction at all, it can only be the invisible aggregate of ransomed souls which is regarded as being the Zion of the prophecy.

But perhaps even that is too definite and hard. And we are rather to think of the unseen but existent order of things or polity to which men here on earth may belong, and which will one day, after shocks and convulsions that shatter all which is merely inst.i.tutional and human, be manifested still more gloriously.

The central thought that was moving in the prophet's mind is that of the indestructible vitality of the true Israel, and the order which it represented, of which Jerusalem on its rock was but to him a symbol.

And thus for us the lesson is that, apart altogether from the existing and visible order of things in which we dwell, there is a polity to which we may belong, for 'ye are come unto Mount Zion, the city of the living G.o.d,' and that that order is indestructible. Convulsions come, every Babylon falls, all human inst.i.tutions change and pa.s.s. 'The kingdoms old' are 'cast into another mould.' But persistent through them all, and at the last, high above them all, will stand the stable polity of Heaven, '_the_ city which hath _the_ foundations.'

_There_ is a lesson for us, brethren, in times of fluctuation, of change of opinion, of shaking of inst.i.tutions, and of new social, economical, and political questions, threatening day by day to reorganise society. 'We have a strong city'; and whatever may come--and much destructive will come, and much that is venerable and antique, rooted in men's prejudices, and having survived through and oppressed the centuries, will have to go; but G.o.d's polity, His form of human society of which the perfect ideal and ant.i.type, so to speak, lies concealed in the heavens, is everlasting. Therefore, whatsoever changes, whatsoever ancient and venerable things come to be regarded as of no account, howsoever the nations, like clay in the hands of the potter, may have to a.s.sume new forms, as certainly they will, yet the foundation of G.o.d standeth sure. And for Christian men in revolutionary epochs, whether these revolutions affect the forms in which truth is grasped, or whether they affect the moulds into which society is run, the only worthy temper is the calm, triumphant expectation that through all the dust, contradiction, and distraction, the fair city of G.o.d will be brought nearer and made more manifest to man. Isaiah, or whoever was the writer of these great words of my text, stayed his own and his people's hearts in a time of confusion and distress, by the thought that it was only Babylon that could fall, and that Jerusalem was the possessor of a charmed, immortal life.

This strong city, the order of human society which G.o.d has appointed, and which exists, though it be hidden in the heavens, will be manifested one day when, like the fair vision of the G.o.ddess rising from amidst the ocean's foam, and shedding peace and beauty over the charmed waves, there will emerge from all the wild confusion and tossing billows of the sea of the peoples the fair form of the 'Bride, the Lamb's wife.' There shall be an apocalypse of the city, and whether the old words which catch up the spirit of my text, and speak of that Holy City as 'descending from heaven' upon earth, at the close of the history of the world, are to be taken, as perhaps they are, as expressive of the truth that a renewed earth is to be the dwelling of the ransomed or no, this at least is clear, that the city shall be revealed, and when Babylon is swept away, Zion shall stand.

To this city--existent, immortal, and waiting to be revealed--you and I may belong to-day. 'We _have_ a strong city.' You may lay hold of life either by the side of it which is transient and trivial and contemptible, or by the side of it which goes down through all the mutable and is rooted in eternity. As in some seaweed, far out in the depths of the ocean, the tiny frond that floats upon the billow goes down and down and down, by filaments that bind it to the basal rock, so the most insignificant act of our fleeting days has a hold upon eternity, and life in all its moments may be knit to the permanent. We may unite our lives with the surface of time or with the centre of eternity. Though we dwell in tabernacles, we may still be 'come to Mount Zion,' and all life be awful, n.o.ble, solemn, religions, because it is all connected with the unseen city across the seas. It is for us to determine to which of these orders--the perishable, noisy and intrusive and persistent in its appeals, or the calm, silent, most real, eternal order beyond the stars--our petty lives shall attach themselves.

II. Now note, secondly, the defences.

'Salvation will G.o.d appoint for walls and bulwarks.' This 'evangelical prophet,' as he has been called, is distinguished, not only by the clearness of his antic.i.p.ations of Jesus Christ and His work, but by the fulness and depth which he attaches to that word 'salvation.' He all but antic.i.p.ates the New Testament completeness and fulness of meaning, and lifts it from all merely material a.s.sociations of earthly or transitory deliverance, into the sphere in which we are accustomed to regard it as especially moving. By 'salvation' he means and we mean, not only negative but positive blessings. Negatively it includes the removal of every conceivable or endurable evil, 'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' whether they be evils of sin or evils of sorrow; and, positively, the invest.i.ture with every possible good that humanity is capable of, whether it be good of goodness, or good of happiness.

This is what the prophet tells us is the wall and bulwark of his ideal-real city.

Mark the eloquent omission of the name of the builder of the wall.

'G.o.d' is a supplement. Salvation 'will _He_ appoint for walls and bulwarks.' No need to say who it is that flings such a fortification around the city. There is only one hand that can trace the lines of such walls; only one hand that can pile their stones; only one that can lay them, as the walls of Jericho were laid, in the blood of His first-born Son. 'Salvation will He appoint for walls and bulwarks.'

That is to say in a highly imaginative and picturesque form, that the defense of the City is G.o.d Himself; and it is substantially a parallel with other words which speak about Him as being 'a wall of fire round about it and the glory in the midst of it.' The fact of salvation is the wall and the bulwark. And the consciousness of the fact and the sense of possessing it, is for our poor hearts, one of our best defenses against both the evil of sin and the evil of sorrow. For nothing so robs temptation of its power, so lightens the pressure of calamities, and draws the poison from the fangs of sin and sorrow, as the a.s.surance that the loving purpose of G.o.d to save grasps and keeps us. They who shelter behind that wall, feel that between them and sin, and them and sorrow, there rises the inexpugnable defense of an Almighty purpose and power to save, lie safe whatever betides. There is no need of other defenses. Zion

'Needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep.'

G.o.d Himself is the shield and none other is required.

So, brethren, let us walk by the faith that is always confident, though it depends on an unseen hand. It is a grand thing to be able to stand, as it were, in the open, a mark for all 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' and yet to feel that around us there are walls most real, though invisible, which permit no harm to come to us. Our feeble sense-bound souls much prefer a visible wall. We, like a handrail on the stair. Though it does not at all guard the descent, it keeps our heads from getting dizzy. It is hard for us, as some travellers may have to do, to walk with steady foot and unthrobbing heart along a narrow ledge of rock with beetling precipice above us and black depths beneath, and we would like a little bit of a wall of some sort, for imagination if not for reality, between us and the sheer descent. But it is blessed to learn that naked we are clothed, solitary we have a Companion, and unarmed we have our defenceless heads covered with the shadow of the great wing, which, though sense sees it not, faith knows is there. A servant of G.o.d is never without a friend, and when most unsheltered

'From marge to blue marge The whole sky grows his targe, With sun's self for visible boss,'

beneath which he lies safe.

'Salvation will G.o.d appoint for walls and bulwarks,' and if we realise, as we ought to do, His purpose to keep us safe, and His power to keep us safe, and the actual operation of His hand keeping us safe at every moment, we shall not ask that these defences shall be supplemented by the poor feeble earthworks that sense can throw up.

III. Lastly, note the citizens.

Our text is part of a 'song,' and is not to be interpreted in the cold-blooded fashion that might suit prose. A voice, coming from whom we know not, breaks in upon the first strain with a command, addressed to whom we know not--'Open ye the gates'--the city thus far being supposed to be empty--'that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.' The central idea there is just this, 'Thy people shall be all righteous.' The one qualification for entrance into the city is absolute purity.

Now, brethren, that is true in regard to our present imperfect denizenship within the city; and it is true in regard to men's pa.s.sing into it in its perfect and final form. As to the former, there is nothing that you Christian people need more to have dinned into you than this, that your continuance in the state of a redeemed man, with all the security and blessing that attach thereto, depends upon your continuing to be righteous. Every sin, every flaw, every dropping beneath our own standard in conscience of what we ought to be, has for its inevitable result that we are robbed for the time being of consciousness of the walls of the city being about us and of our being citizens thereof. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place?' The New Testament, as emphatically as the old psalm, answers,' He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.'

'Let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous.'

There is no way by which Christian men here on earth can pa.s.s into and keep within the city of the living G.o.d, except they possess personal purity, righteousness of life, and cleanness of heart.

They used to say that Venice gla.s.s was so made that any poison poured into it shivered the vessel. Any drop of sin poured into your cup of communion with G.o.d, shatters the cup and spills the wine. Whosoever thinks himself a citizen of that great city, if he falls into transgression, and soils the cleanness of his hands, and ruffles the calm of his pure heart by self-willed sinfulness, will wake to find himself not within the battlements, but lying wounded, robbed, solitary, in the pitiless desert. My brother, it is 'the righteous nation' that 'enters in,' even here on earth.

I do not need to remind you how, admittedly by us all, that is the case in regard to the final form of the city of our G.o.d, into which nothing shall enter 'that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie.' Heaven can only be entered into hereafter by, as here and now it can only enter into, those who are pure of heart. All else there would shrivel as foul things born In the darkness do in the light, and be consumed in the fire. None but the pure can enter and see G.o.d.

'The nation which keepeth the truth'--that does not mean adherence to any revelation, or true creed, or the like. The word which is employed means, not truth of thought, but truth of character; and might, perhaps, be better represented by the more familiar word in such a connection, 'faithfulness.' A man who is true to G.o.d, keeping up a faithful relation to Him who is faithful to us, he, and only he, will pa.s.s into, and abide in, the city.

Now, brethren, so far our text carries us, but no further; unless, perhaps, there may be a hint of something yet deeper in the next clause of this song. If any one asks, How does the nation become righteous?